This dissertation delves into second language acquisition, sociophonetic variation, and speech perception, investigating how prior linguistic experiences and exposure to regional variations in a second language influence the decoding of dialectal linguistic cues. It aims to enhance the understanding of words pronounced with different phones and…

English-language, and especially US-American TV series have been identified as a major point of contact with the target language for learners of English as a Foreign Language, and the discourse represented there constitutes authentic material that is easily accessible. While the potential of using TV discourse in language education has been widely…

This study is based on a broad research question: How does the translation into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) capture and convey the meanings embedded within languages belonging both inside and outside the sphere of the Arab world? To answer this question, a translation and literary study of borrowings, combining the methods of etymology and…

Via an account of the genesis, development, and enactment of a seminar in translingual writing, this paper represents an attempt to indicate the extensive amount and interdisciplinary nature of the knowledge that one needs to be familiar with in order to develop a rich and nuanced understanding of the phenomenon as well as to provide a resource…

Dialogue is promoted as a key strategy to "solve" the "problem" of diversity in educational settings. Yet, "[w]hen we select words … We usually take them from other utterances, and mainly from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre, that is in theme, composition or style" (p. 87, emphasis in the original). This…

The Appraisal Theory includes three subsystems of evaluation; Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study focuses on Graduation subsystem which is used by writers to amplify or diminish the scope of these two subsystems. It consists of Focus and Force options. Focus expressions are usually non-gradable they tend to sharpen or soften the…

"Gastarbeiterdeutsch" includes varieties of German spoken by the many foreign workers employed in low-paid, less desirable jobs in Germany. It is characterized by reduction and simplification of syntactic and semantic forms. Study of this dialect reveals patterns of natural language acquisition necessary for communication, useful in classroom…

Defining stylistics as the study of all the varieties which constitute a language, the author discusses some of the concepts relative to stylistic analysis and describes the dimensions of style which the teacher must bear in mind when approaching the study of English. To be continued in a later issue. (FWB)

When children (particularly African Americans) have a different orthography, phonemic system, and deep structure from Standard American English (SAE) speakers, they may have difficulty grasping the correct SAE phonemes represented by the symbols and reading in general. Language acquisition is natural learning centered around the interaction of…

This paper discusses the need for foreign language students to develop positive attitudes about regional and social dialect variation, while learning dialectal patterns that will best facilitate their widest acceptance into a community of target language speakers. The latter issue was tested in a study in which native speakers of American English…

This issue has four articles. Maria del Pilar Garcia Mayo and Teresa Pica in "Is the EFL Environment a Language Learning Environment?" address the question of whether the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom is an environment that promotes input, feedback, and the production of output that is necessary for successful second…

The need to teach students speaking skills in Spanish, and to choose among the many standard dialects spoken in the Hispanic world (as well as literary and colloquial speech), presents a challenge to the Spanish teacher. Some phonetic considerations helpful in solving these problems are offered. (CHK)

The aim of this paper is to clear up some of the confusion that has developed around interpretations of Bernstein's concept of code-distribution. After a rapid review of the main dimensions of linguistic variation within a given society, with particular attention to sociolectal and register variation, 'codes' are examined and compared with…

This issue contains articles ranging from a theoretical discussion of the nature of an international language to an assessment of the implications of teaching a local form of English. The following articles are included: (1) "International English and Language Variation," by M. Lester; (2) "The English Language, Ideology, and…

Nonnative institutionalized varieties of English (NIVEs) are placed within a wide framework that includes the study of language contact and language acquisition in general. NIVEs and other contact varieties are explored from a sociolinguistic as well as second-language acquisition perspective. (105 references) (Author/LB)